Many passenger seats such as those on passenger aircraft, busses, trains, and the like are designed with a recline function to allow for greater comfort to passengers, particularly on longer journeys. To increase passenger comfort, seats may be designed with complex articulations, including different motions for the seat back and seat bottom or pan.
In some instances, a passenger seat may include a leg rest to support the passenger's calves, feet, or thighs when they are in a reclined position. These leg rests are typically mounted to a solid part of the passenger seat structure. For example, a leg rest may be mounted directly to a stationary part of the seat frame or to a seat tube. It is desirable to include a leg rest on a reclining seat to increase passenger comfort. The conventional method of mounting a leg rest to a reclining passenger seat has a number of disadvantages. The addition of a leg rest mounted to the seat tube or other stationary part of the passenger seat adds additional mounting hardware and linkages that may encroach on the mounting hardware and linkages for the seat back and seat bottom. Additional hardware may also be necessary to coordinate the motion of the seat back, seat bottom, and leg rest during seat recline.
Because of the additional hardware, the addition of more moving parts to a reclining seat, like a leg rest, often times leads to compromises in the range and type of motion available to each individual seat component. Not only do the additional mechanical parts restrict motion, but allowances for complementary ranges of motion for different portions of the passenger seat further diminishes available motion to avoid impingement of the portions of the passenger seat on one another.
In certain cases, it may be desirable to provide a passenger seat with a deployable leg rest that is coupled directly to the seat bottom. This arrangement may allow the leg rest to move and articulate with the seat and pivot and/or extend away from the seat bottom during deployment. The resulting mechanism, including an actuator to initiate and deploy the leg rest, is often simpler, lighter, and more compact than existing leg rest mechanisms. Such an integrated leg rest may allow for a greater range of movement for the seat back and seat bottom by reducing the amount of hardware contained under and within the seat and moving with the seat bottom to avoid interference with other reclining mechanisms and hardware.